SetNumber on Android

[sapooler]

Is there a reason why there's no android equivalent to the setBadgeCount function available in the build on iOS?

I noted that under the hood in Kotlin you can do something like

    val context = reactApplicationContext
    val notificationManager = context.getSystemService(Context.NOTIFICATION_SERVICE) as NotificationManager

    if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.O) {
        // Note: setNumber() is applied when building a Notification instance.
        // Example of updating or creating a notification with setNumber:
        val channelId = "default_channel_id" // Ensure this channel exists in your app

        val notification = android.app.Notification.Builder(context, channelId)
            .setContentTitle("App Notification")
            .setContentText("You have new updates")
            .setSmallIcon(android.R.drawable.ic_dialog_info)
            .setNumber(number) // Sets the badge count / notification number
            .build()

which should set the notification number in the badge on newer versions of android.

Hence I was wondering if something similar is on the way?

[marcocrupi]

Hi @sapooler,

Thanks for opening this discussion and for taking the time to suggest this improvement.

You were right that the Android side was not very discoverable compared to the iOS setBadgeCount() API, so we have updated the documentation to make the existing Android functionality clearer.

NotifyKit already supports Android notification numbers through android.badgeCount. For example:

await notifee.createChannel({
  id: 'messages',
  name: 'Messages',
  badge: true,
});

await notifee.displayNotification({
  id: 'messages',
  title: 'New messages',
  body: 'You have 5 unread messages',
  android: {
    channelId: 'messages',
    badgeCount: 5,
  },
});

android.badgeCount is associated with the individual Android notification and maps conceptually to AndroidX NotificationCompat.Builder.setNumber(...), which is the functionality you were referring to.

If you want to update that number, you can display the notification again using the same notification id and a new badgeCount value.

There is, however, an important difference compared with iOS.

On iOS, notifee.setBadgeCount() controls the application icon badge globally and independently from individual notifications. Android does not expose an equivalent standard public API for setting a global app icon badge count without an associated posted notification.

On Android, badgeCount instead sets the number belonging to a specific notification. The launcher may then use that information when rendering the app badge.

The actual visual result is launcher/OEM dependent:

• some launchers may display a numeric badge;
• some may display only a notification dot;
• some may aggregate active notifications differently.

On Android 8.0+ the notification channel must also allow badging, for example with badge: true. This enables notifications from that channel to participate in launcher badging, but it does not itself set the count.

So the functionality you suggested is already available, but the documentation did not make it clear enough. We have now updated both the README and the Android badges documentation to explain android.badgeCount, its relationship with Android's setNumber(), and the difference from the global iOS setBadgeCount() API.

Thanks again for bringing this up. Your suggestion helped us identify a real documentation/discoverability gap and make the existing Android functionality much easier to find.